


Find Your Way

by storiesfortravellers



Category: White Collar
Genre: Adjusting, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Guilt, M/M, Mentions of Fear and Witnessing Abuse in Prison, Multi, Prison, Speculation for Season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 14:22:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/979951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No spoilers but deals with speculated events of Season 5.</p><p>After Peter gets out of prison, Peter doesn't seem like his old self -- he wasn't physically hurt, but the time took its toll. Neal and El try to help him, as Neal deals with his own guilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Your Way

Neal opened his eyes as Peter shifted next to him. Peter whimpered something, some memory or fear that Neal couldn’t discern, then shifted backward and began snoring again.

Peter didn’t used to talk in his sleep. 

Neal moved forward, slowly, to put his arm around Peter’s waist. Elizabeth was a sound sleeper, but Neal had to move slowly to not wake Peter.

They used to switch positions, but since getting out of prison, Peter always slept in the middle, two warm bodies encompassing him from either side. Neal liked to think that it helped.

Peter had gotten his job back. His name had been cleared. He hadn’t been physically attacked in prison due to the fact that he was under the highest level of protective custody. (Actually it was because Mozzie had a contact who had a contact who put a large bribe in the hands of the most feared killer in that particular prison facility, but Peter didn’t need to know that.)

On the surface, everything seemed fine. Peter was welcomed to cheers from his team, and his success rates on cases were back to the top of the Bureau. Diana and Jones and some of the others may have suspected that Peter was more affected than he seemed by the ordeal, but Peter didn’t show them much to go on. 

Only El and Neal were permitted to see that everything had changed. Neal knew he should feel honored by this intimacy, this trust. 

But instead, it just reminded Neal that it was all his fault.

\--

Every night for the year that Peter was in prison, Neal thought about what it must be like for him. The thoughts would make for long, sleepless nights.

There was the fear. No amount of protection can stop the fear, which could only be worse for someone in law enforcement. Every time you heard footsteps, you tried to hear some violent intent in the pace, the rhythm of every man walking by. Constant fear.

There was the feeling of helplessness. The thought that you could do nothing to help your own situation or the people you love. For Peter this also must have been worse, since at least Neal had always known that he could escape if he had to. Not to mention that Peter… well, Peter was very, very bad at doing nothing.

Which led to boredom. Soul-killing, mind-dulling boredom. Especially since being ‘protected’ also meant being isolated from human contact for most of the day. It wasn’t solitude of the Walden pond sort; it was a tense boredom, having nothing to do but never being able to relax, because of the fear, because of the helplessness.

And then there was the apathy. You could commit crimes and still believe that you’re a good person. When you leave prison, the best you can imagine is that you’re not one of the worst kind of people. In prison, there’s a system, and if you play it smart and have resources, you can protect yourself. You might even be able to help a couple of other people. But you can’t help everyone. There will be violence and assault and corruption and cruelty, and you’ll know it’s going on, but you won’t be able to do anything without getting killed, especially if the guards are involved. Even Peter wouldn’t be able to – he’d never get enough proof from his position to make any change. Not to mention that every night you’d hear the screams of the prisoners who couldn’t handle it any more, being there. No amount of yelling or threats could stop them from their nightly wail, and all you could do was lie there, almost always unsympathetic, and wish they would shut up.

This would also be worse for Peter. As much as Neal had the habit (a dangerous one, according to Moz) of intervening when he saw someone picking on someone smaller, it was Peter who absolutely couldn’t stand to look the other way when people were in danger, when people were hurt. Neal had always loved this about him, but when Peter was in, Neal would have given anything for Peter to be the kind of man who could hear another man screaming and just not give a damn. Prison taught you to live with apathy, to shut out your heart and your humanity because you just couldn’t hold on to your sanity if you didn’t.

Neal knew that Peter would survive. Peter was strong, stronger than anyone he knew. But he didn’t know if the man who returned would be the same as the one who left.

He was right to worry.

\--

When Neal started his relationship with Peter and Elizabeth, back when they were working the Adler case and they decided it was time to finally be honest with each other, Neal was keenly aware that there were things that they wouldn’t understand. Neal tried to never let them think that prison had affected him – Peter shouldn’t have to feel guilty for that. Neal was different from them in so many ways, and this was just another one. They were the perfect couple; Neal had no idea how to do normal life. They led honest lives and believed in a just world; Neal still, as much as he tried, couldn’t see the point -- he had to think that life is just people taking whatever they can however they can, so you should just be better at taking and take better things. They were open, ready to communicate and commit and trust as if these were the easiest things in the world; Neal still winced when he heard his real name. They were well-adjusted; Neal had a psych profile 80 pages long, and had long had suspicions that he might be a little of what normal people called “broken.”

Neal knew that he was nothing like the Burkes. He was almost a different species, but if they didn’t mind, he would try not to mind either. 

When Peter came back from prison, Neal realized that Peter much more like Neal than he used to be. 

Sometimes it was obvious: Peter would wake up from a nightmare, from some terror that he would be trapped and alone forever, and El and Neal would hug him, practically hold him down as he wept in their arms. (There was a time when Neal needed them to do that for him).

Mostly, though, it was subtle. There was a hardness to Peter now, a weariness that he hid better in public than in private. And sometimes he would stare off, with a haunted look that Neal had never seen on him before.

Peter spent a lot of time in the backyard, building things. Furniture mostly. It never looked very good, and Peter usually just scrapped it and used the wood to build something else. El said it was natural for Peter to need some time alone, and Neal tried to believe her.

Peter also was spending a lot of time pretending. Conning, in a sense. Acting like he was cheerful when El and Neal knew him well enough to see past it. But they never called him on it. They let him have his dignity, and if he needed to pretend sometimes, that was his choice. Often, when they brought it up, he claimed that he wasn’t all that affected by what happened. Neal understood that Peter didn’t want Neal to feel guiltier than he already did. What really worried him was when he realized that Peter was shutting Elizabeth out too. 

What Elizabeth had gone through was Neal’s fault too, of course. And she was so grateful to have Peter back, so terrified that she would make his recovery more painful, that she was never confrontational, never yelled at Peter to let her in, never told Peter that he had to deal with his issues and talk about it more. And if El didn’t think it was a good idea, Neal certainly wasn’t going to say something. Though it scared him, to see Elizabeth unable to fix Peter, even if he knew, rationally, that he had no right to expect magic from her.

Peter was throwing himself into work, but it didn’t give him that same spark that it used to. Neal could tell that he wasn’t excited about a juicy case, not like before. It was more like Peter had something to prove. His passion for throwing criminals into prison had subsided considerably.

But the worst change in Peter, Neal believed, was not because of his time in prison. It was because he was falsely accused. It was because the Bureau and the government and everything he had ever sworn to protect and defend had turned against him. And it wasn’t even that the system was slow, that it eventually acknowledged the truth. Neal and Mozzie had blackmailed an international criminal who in turn blackmailed a politician who pressured a judge to get Peter out and cleared. This wasn’t like being set up and having your name cleared in a couple of weeks. This was a year of believing that the system had taken everything from you and that you would never get it back. This was knowing, in your core, that truth and right and wrong and justice and law and order were just stories that people told, that power mattered and people didn’t. Most people – and Peter more than anyone – had hope that if they followed the rules and did right then they would reap their rewards. They placed their hope in being productive and valued members of society. Criminals hoped too, but their hope was that they could live their lives without society hammering them into the ground. It’s not that Peter believed now that crime was all right. It was that Peter didn’t trust in anything. He still trusted the people he cared about, even Neal (not that he deserved it). But he didn’t trust life, trust the world, the way he used to. He viewed the Bureau with suspicion, whenever he had to deal with one of the higher ups. Even his comments while watching the news had become more cynical, bitter even. He didn’t think of the world like Peter any more; he had never committed a crime, never done anything but try to help Neal, but he thought of the world like a criminal did, like Neal did, like Mozzie did.

Neal did the best he could to be supportive. He gave Peter his space but managed to find the occasional way to distract him. Sometimes, he would say outrageous things about baseball just to get Peter to argue with him, until Peter would suddenly laugh and pat his cheek and say that he knew that Neal was trying to rile him up on purpose. He would say that he appreciated it.

Sometimes Neal would see that Peter was distracted at work (if it were anyone but Peter, Neal wouldn’t find this so disturbing). Neal would lean over and whisper something in his ear, something dirty, some promise or invitation, and soon Peter would be concentrating on keeping his face neutral and pretending that Neal was talking about work instead of on whatever dark place his mind had gone to. 

Sometimes Neal would plan dates for the three of them, and sometimes, at El’s urging, just for himself and Peter. He counted on Peter’s love of learning new things, and took him to an archery range, a parasailing outfit, swing dance lessons, racecar driving lessons. Sometimes, Peter would get that look, that fire of excitement, that he used to have, that eagerness for all that life might offer. He almost never had that any more (for the first month, it wasn’t there at all; the first time it appeared was when Neal and El had spent all evening teasing him and finally led him to bed; for a long time after that it was only sex that could make Peter seem like his old self, and Neal wasn’t sure if he could have gotten through any of this if it weren’t for those little glimpses that he could see when they were wrapped around Peter, bodies gripping each other closer, harder, until all three of them forgot everything but the feel of lips and tongues and sounds of moans filling the room, drowning out the past and future both. 

Sometimes, after sex, after a rare good day, Peter would pull them into a close hug, tell them how grateful he was to have them. How nothing mattered to him but them.

This always made Neal feel worse. Even guiltier. 

The guilt, slowly by slowly, was crushing him. And despite how much Neal loved them, the guilt was making him think inexcusable things. It was making him think of running.

He probably would have, despite how much he loved being around them, if it weren’t for the fact that running would be another betrayal. 

But Neal never showed it. He just kept doing everything he could to help Peter become more like what he used to be. To help him become less like Neal. 

\--

When Neal first joined the Burkes, when they invited him against all good sense into their home and their bed and their family, Neal was worried that they were just too different. 

And he wasn’t sure if he could be with some normal (if brilliant and sexy) couple, with their normal lives and normal dog and normal home. He knew that they wanted Neal to open up to them. But people like that could never understand Neal. 

He wished sometimes, back then, that they – and Peter especially, rigid, honorable, rules-loving Peter – could see the world the way he did. It would make Neal feel safer, like he didn’t have to hide so much of what he was, like he could be around them the way he was with Mozzie. It would make him feel less alone – and it can be hard, to be in a bed with two people who love you and still feel alone. 

It was a selfish, short-sighted wish, and even back then, Neal knew it.

Now that Peter has been a ‘criminal,’ now that Peter thinks the way the world works is one big con, now that Peter has learned to ignore the screams of desperate men and has spent a year of his life staring at a concrete wall, Peter is more like Neal than Neal ever could have hoped. 

Neal feels guilty for the role he played in Peter’s ordeal – his naivety about his father and his many, many other mistakes. He is guilty that it took him a year just to clear Peter’s name and that he couldn’t do with evidence, which would have made Peter proud. He is guilty that he has been nothing but a hardship to Peter and El, that they would be so much better off if they had never even met Neal Caffrey, or if they had just left him to rot any of the hundred times they should have.

But especially, Neal feels guilty for the way Peter has changed. He feels guilty that sometimes Peter and Neal look at each other, and they can each know the exact shape of the other man’s pain. He feels guilty that Peter is worse, is less, than he used to be.

And most of all, Neal feels guilty that some tiny part of him, some cold petty core, is grateful that Peter is just like him. Some small shard of Neal’s very worst side is grateful that now, when Peter moans his bad memories aloud in bed, Neal no longer feels alone. 

Neal thinks that the guilt might kill him. But he’s determined to stay until it does.

**Author's Note:**

> For sapphire2309's prompt on comment-fic on lj: White Collar, Neal/Peter/Elizabeth, "Perfect fit - you're just as broken as me."


End file.
